Never Underestimate The Meanness In

I Want My Stories To Be Something About Life That Causes People To Say, Not, Oh, Isn't That The Truth, But To Feel Some Kind Of Reward From The Writing, And That Doesn't Mean That It Has To Be A Happy Ending Or Anything, But Just That Everything The Story Tells Moves The Reader In Such A Way That You Feel You Are A Different Person When You Finish.

Children Of Course Are Monstrously Conventional, Repelled At Once By Whatever Is Off-center, Out Of Whack, Unmanageable. And Being An Only Child I Had Been Coddled A Good Deal (also Scolded). I Was Awkward, Precocious, Timid, Full Of My Private Rituals And Aversions.

His Face Contained For Me All Possibilities Of Fierceness And Sweetness, Pride And Submissiveness, Violence, Self-containment. I Never Saw More In It Than I Had When I Saw It First, Because I Saw Everything Then. The Whole Thing In Him That I Was Going To Love, And Never Catch Or Explain.

For We Did Makeup. But We Didn't Forgive Each Other. And We Didn't Take Steps. And It Got To Be Too Late And We Saw That Each Of Us Had Invested Too Much In Being In The Right And We Walked Away And It Was A Relief.

Usually, I Have A Lot Of Acquaintance With The Story Before I Start Writing It. When I Didn't Have Regular Time To Give To Writing, Stories Would Just Be Working In My Head For So Long That When I Started To Write I Was Deep Into Them. Now, I Do That Work By Filling Notebooks.